The Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership awarded UCA $202,000 through opioid settlement dollars, and the funding will be used to establish a peer support and recovery specialist program to combat substance abuse in the community.
The two-year funding started July 1 and will employ two peer support and recovery specialists and graduate-level interns who will operate through the Community Care Clinic.
Stephanie Rose, addiction studies program director and principal investigator of the peer support and recovery specialist program, said, “The money is strictly going to pay the salaries for these positions, as well as a student worker position, which will also be hiring full-time to be able to extend the hours of the clinic and hopefully meet the needs of students who have class all day or work as well as go to class.”
“They’ll also be able to work with anybody else in the clinic if they need additional services,” she said. “But we strategically place them at the Cares Clinic because they’ll be helping our students but also the community.”
The program started after an outside agency sought to open a substance abuse treatment facility in Conway but withdrew.
“But as UCA, we were going to house the peer support specialists for them until they got their building open,” Rose said. “Well, when they had to pull out, we were like, ‘Oh, no, we needed this.’ We were really excited. We had a meeting with Conway Regional, who is about to open up a detox unit that is very needed in Conway, and then the Conway Crisis PD.
“I said, ‘I’ll apply for the grant. Let’s just see what happens.’ We applied for one position, and the Arkansas Opioid and Recovery Partnership said, ‘We love your proposal and that it’s truly community-based. We’re going to give you two positions and fund them for two years.’ And so that’s how this came into fruition.”
The program will have Self-Management and Recovery Training recovery groups that utilize motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral therapy during weekly sessions open to students and community members.
There will also be a SMART Recovery Group for those who have loved ones struggling with addiction.
“We forget about those folks sometimes,” she said. “Ensuring that they have good support and good coping skills also assist them to be healthy, have good mental health and use good coping skills, because oftentimes, we can see family and friends starting to engage in substance use as a way to cope with their loved ones’ use.”
“Addiction is so multifaceted. We have genetic considerations,” Rose said.
“People can get addicted just from going to their doctor and taking medications as prescribed,”
She said. “Many times, we think people are deserving of the outcomes that happen with their addiction. But addiction is an illness, just like many other illnesses, and we also need to think about how different substances are.
“Now, we are having cartels poison all kinds of substances with fentanyl and xylazine. So many overdoses are unintentional because people didn’t know they were taking something like fentanyl,” she said.
The program will also partner with Conway Police Department’s Community Crisis Response Team.
Lieutenant and CCRT Program Coordinator Andrew Johnson said, “Our CCRT teams will, for the most part, act as a point of entry for the program. Our teams respond to individuals in crisis directly from calls to our dispatch center or to our office. Once they are on scene, they operate with the mindset of de-escalation first and then work toward problem-solving.”
Rose said, “When someone’s in a crisis, or in a moment where they need help, or maybe this is an opportunity for them to get some help, someone being there who can show empathy and has some lived experience, taking them by the hand and saying, saying, ‘I can help you through this. I want to help you through this,’ versus a law enforcement approach or some of the other approaches that have been used in the past.”
Johnson said, “After first meeting with Dr. Rose and having subsequent conversations with her about her vision for this program, there was no way that we could not support this. This program will fill a significant gap in services both for UCA’s campus as well as the community as a whole. This is something our CCRT teams see firsthand on a daily basis, and we are excited to partner with Dr. Rose on this.”
She said the program aims to hire someone within the next two weeks.
“We want to get those SMART Recovery groups initiated, and that to be just automatic support for anyone,” she said.
She said, “Secondly, we want to build a bigger coalition on the UCA campus that is more student-based and empowered, so it’s not just faculty or staff on campus doing events — it can be more students putting on these events, and I think that can be a lot more powerful as well.”
Rose said there is no cookie-cutter solution to addiction.
“If you’re more comfortable going somewhere else, do it. Do what helps you to meet your goals. But this is here for you if you need it,” she said. “We want to have provided to you, but if it’s not your vibe, it doesn’t work for you — do what is. Whatever it takes to assist you with meeting your goals of getting clean and sober.”